#TBT: Krispy Kreme’s 80th Birthday

Krispy Kreme opened its first store 80 years ago today in Winston-Salem. To celebrate the beginning of the famous North Carolina company, we’ve created a gallery (at the bottom of the page) of news articles, ads, and photos from its history.

Want to learn more about Krispy Kreme? Start with Bridget Madden’s excellent blog post for the North Carolina Collection’s This Month in North Carolina History from 2009 for a brief overview of the company’s history or Krispy Kreme’s own timeline on their website.

Finally, this video from the Smithsonian (the source of the GIF at the beginning of this post) discusses the innovative process Krispy Kreme invented to make their doughnuts:

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Two men sit at the counter of a Krispy Kreme store in 1958.

This ad for the grand opening of a new Krispy Kreme store in Atlanta ran in the February 22nd, 1958 edition of the Atlanta Constitution. The store in question was open 24 hours a day and had 23 flavors of dougnut. There is still a Krispy Kreme in West End, though not at this address.

The Krispy Automatic Ring-King Junior was introduced by the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Corporation of Winston-Salem, N.C., in the 1950s. It was designed for making the company’s signature product—hot glazed doughnuts—in small retail operations around the United States and abroad. The Ring-King Junior could produce about 60 dozen doughnuts an hour, and was used until the late 1960s.

In 1961, Krispy Kreme wanted to expand in large cities east of the Mississippi. They ran this ad in the New York Times looking for potential locations.

Krispy Kreme doughnuts were popular as giveaways at grocery stores and socials, and remain a key fundraising item.